Crowding Forces State To Plan 3 New Prisons

April 04, 1986|By Daniel Egler and Hanke Gratteau.

Faced with increasingly dangerous situations in the state`s overcrowded prisons, Gov. James Thompson Thursday said he plans to build three new prisons by the end of the decade to lower the number of inmates at the most crowded penal facilities.

Sites for the 750-bed prisons have not been selected, the governor said, but public hearings will be held in at least six cities and towns that in recent years have lobbied to be selected as sites for new correctional centers.

Following the site review by Michael P. Lane, director of the Department of Corrections, and administration aides, locations for two of the prisons will be announced next month. Thompson said hearings for possible sites for the third new prison may be held later in the year and will be open to all interested cities.

``We`re looking at three new prisons before the end of the decade, one a year for three years,`` said David Fields, the governor`s press secretary.

The communities under consideration for the first prison construction include East St. Louis, Macomb, Canton, Mt. Sterling, Streator and Flora, which is in Downstate Clay County. Those areas made unsuccessful bids for a new prison in 1983, when Thompson and the Department of Corrections selected Galesburg for a 900-bed institution.

Chicago, where corrections officials have been rebuffed by community opposition in their attempts to locate a prison, is not being considered this year, an administration source said.

Each of the new prisons is expected to cost $41 million and Thompson said, ``We will build these as fast as we can within the constraints of the capital budget.`` Although increased borrowing from the bond market is the most likely way to pay for the new prisons, Fields said the administration is exploring several financing methods, including leasing privately built facilities.

Democrats have pointed out that Thompson included no prison construction money in his proposed budget for the next fiscal year and said they may propose $100 million in new money for prison construction. With an already tight budget, the state probably could not afford such spending without a tax increase or cuts in other programs.

``That`s just what we need, an election-year prison sweepstakes with all these cities almost begging Thompson for a prison,`` said a Democratic staff aide.

The decision to expand prison space was the result of a report issued last month by the corrections department that warned of rioting and loss of lives because of dangerous overcrowding in the state`s 18 adult prisons, sources said.

The report said more than 18,000 inmates were being housed in the prisons, which ideally should hold no more than 13,762. According to the corrections department, prison overcrowding will become an even more critical problem by 1990, when the prison population is projected to reach 21,855 inmates.

But the report also urged that capacity levels at the state`s four maximum-security prisons be reduced by 3,129 beds, a 38 percent reduction in the 8,210-inmate population at Menard, Pontiac, Stateville and Joliet.

Under Thompson`s plan, inmates sentenced to the maximum-security facilities for lesser crimes could be transferred to the new prisons under a

``reward system`` for good behavior, Fields said.

Another problem noted in the report is the changing nature of the prison population--younger and more violent--which has led to a 48 percent increase in the number of disciplinary problems between 1983 and 1985 while the prison population increased only 28 percent during the same time. Good time revocations, the report said, have increased 88.4 percent, more than triple the population increase.

``Our four oldest prisons also are our most crowded. They are the places where violent acts are occurring and where they are likely to continue to occur, not because of bad management, but because of overcrowding,`` the governor said.

Thompson`s plan was endorsed by the John Howard Association, a prison watchdog group, which also contends that the prison population could be decreased by alternative methods of sentencing or lowering the maximum terms enacted by the General Assembly under Thompson`s determinate sentencing program.

``We support the planned new prisons, but once again the administration believes that the only answer is to build, which is the most expensive and takes the longest,`` said Michael Mahoney, executive director of the Chicago- based organization. ``I don`t see how the state can come near Lane`s ideal capacities without some form of increased good time.``

Though communities in the past resisted prison construction in their midst, the high unemployment that has plagued Illinois in recent years changed that.

Each new prison would create at least 400 permanent jobs and provide an annual payroll of $10 million a year, according to state officials and Rep. Thomas Homer (D., Canton).